Hair loss? The three most common causes and effective treatments

For men, male pattern baldness is the most common cause of hair loss. Blame your parents and your parents' parents because it's inherited. A simple scalp massage won't help, and it's not even because you have more testosterone .. you just have delicate follicles. They are reacting to a derivative of testosterone.

Women have an equivalent too, predictably called female pattern hair loss. Less common, it shows itself with a general thinning of the hair over all of the top of the head.

Another possibility for both sexes is alopecia areata, where small patches of baldness appear on the scalp, almost overnight. Sometimes it gets better by itself, sometimes worse. No-one's quite sure about the cause but it seems to be linked to the immune system.

There was a time when going bald was the subject of derision in the newspapers, especially for celebrities who tried early treatments, so the whole area of hair loss treatment has suffered an image problem. Nowadays with men much more interested in grooming and taking care of themselves, hair loss is out in the open.

There are two modern and genuine drugs for hair loss treatment that have gotten the seal of approval from the FDA (the American body that tests and approves drugs for market if they actually work without major side effects). Minoxidil works by stimulating the blood supply, and Propecia stops those testosterone derivatives reaching your hair follicles. For treatment of men, the combination of both works really well to stop hair loss and promote hair growth. Propecia is not approved for women, however.

There are a number of products containing these drugs, but at London's Belgravia Centre we find we get the best results by creating individual hair loss treatment programmes that include choosing the right dosage of each of those drugs along with other therapies that help such as steam scalp treatment and herbal supplements. We monitor each client closely, taking a photograph of their scalp for our records, and we often include a free laser comb with our treatment programmes.

Our strategy is simple. We work hard to provide proven treatments through skilled staff at a great price. Our success comes from our popularity, not from high prices. To that end we have our own in-house pharmacy. We know what we do is more effective and less expensive than any other London clinic because we regularly send out secret shoppers.

We also get great results even for people who are losing their hair and can't get to our London hair loss clinic. For those, there's our comprehensive online diagnostic hair loss questionnaire. Anyone can complete that and that gives us a good chance of providing full course of appropriate and proven treatment to be delivered to their home.

Overall, the biggest stumbling block is scepticism. Hair loss treatment has a bad history, so people go through needless worry over hair loss when there are perfectly effective and affordable treatments available. We try to overcome this with our 'before and during hair loss treatment' photo scans that show the real results we achieve daily.

Acting quickly is the real key, and there scepticism holds people back again. The problem is, the more hair you lose, the less you are going to get back. A smooth scalp is not going to start growing hair again. Hair loss can be treated effectively if it's caught early.